CVE-2026-14805

Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress Theme <= 6.7.16 - Authenticated (Subscriber+) Privilege Escalation via AJAX

State
Published
Severity
8.8 High
Published
Sep 15, 2026
Updated
Sep 17, 2026
Reserved
Jul 6, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

The Consulting theme for WordPress is vulnerable to Privilege Escalation in versions up to, and including, 6.7.16. This is due to a combination of two flaws: (1) the masterstudy_ms_stm_set_discard_transient AJAX endpoint in admin/admin-notices/classes/STMHandler.php accepts an arbitrary transient key without capability checks or nonce validation, and (2) the developer access login mechanism in admin/classes/stm-theme-support.php authenticates users based on a transient value without proper cryptographic validation when in legacy string mode. This makes it possible for authenticated attackers, with subscriber-level access and above, to set the stm_developer_access_token transient to a known value (1), then authenticate as any existing user including administrators by visiting a specially crafted URL, thereby achieving full privilege escalation to administrator.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.18.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HWordfence

Weaknesses

  • CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management

Affected Products

ProductVersions
Consulting - Business, Finance WordPress ThemeStylemixThemes
  • 6.7.16 and earlierAffected

References

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